Credible Source

Elizabeth Cassidy is reporting from the UN Human Rights Council's conference. It's an excellent (if depressing) post. Far and away the best part, though, was her recounting of Nobel Laureate Jody Williams' report on Darfur, which she is battling to see adopted by the commission:

Watch Jody Williams take those challenging her team's report to task for playing political games in Geneva while Darfuris die. Noting the Council's double standards on Sudan and Israel, Williams said that if her mission had gone to Palestine, "I imagine that the discussion here would be amazingly different." Regarding the challenges to the credibility of the report, she told Council members that the issue on credibility is "not about ours, it's about yours."

Supporting adaptation are Canada, Japan, South Korea and the European democracies. In opposition are most of the rest of the Asian bloc, the Arab League, the Organization of the Islamic Conference, Russia, and Cuba. The swing votes are in Africa--several nations spoke out in favor of the report, but others have not publicly revealed a preference.

Speaking of Cuba, while they cannot bring themselves to condemn genocide in Darfur, they did issue a statement accusing Sweden of "carry[ing] out ethnic cleansing that only allows those whose skin and hair color fit with the racial patterns of former Viking conquerors to remain in the country."

The entire post is worth reading, if only to know what we're dealing with when talking of the highest human rights body in the world.